1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid ejecting apparatus, such as a printer, and to a liquid supplying apparatus that supplies a liquid such as ink.
2. Related Art
An example of a liquid ejecting apparatus is an ink jet type printer that filtrates an ink from an ink tank by passing the ink through a filter before supplying the ink to a recording head (e.g., JP-A-2012-846).
In order to stably supply ink even when the amount of ink consumption is large, the area of the filter needs to be large to reduce the flow path resistance. However, if the area of the filter is increased, the cross-section area of a flow path at the filter increases and therefore the flow speed of the ink passing through the filter decreases.
Furthermore, in the case where ink contains undesirable substances such as bubbles, gel-like fluidal masses, it is preferable that such undesirable substances be trapped by a filter at the time of printing. However, at the time of a maintenance operation performed by causing ink to flow in order to discharge undesirable substances, it is preferable that the trapped bubbles or the like pass through the filter and be discharged from the recording head together with the ink.
Note that undesirable substances that have fluidity, such as bubbles, pass through the filter more easily as ink flows faster. Therefore, if the area of the filter is increased in order to stably supply ink, there arises a problem that the flow speed of ink at the time of maintenance decreases making it less easy for bubbles or the like to be discharged during the maintenance.
This problem is not limited to the printers that perform printing by ejecting ink but is substantially common among liquid ejecting apparatuses and liquid supplying apparatuses equipped with a filter disposed in an intermediate portion of a flow path.